Question 48: What is the difference of the burdens in Galatians 6:2,5? A. M. C.
Answer: In the 2nd verse it is helping others to bear their trials. This is the law of Christ, this is what He did when here on earth. We can do it by prayer for them and sympathy with them, and relieve them when we are able. Verse 5 means that each of us is responsible before God for our own work. The false teachers thought of themselves instead of serving Christ. (See Gal. 6:3-4). This will come out at the judgment seat of Christ.
Question 49: Please explain Luke 11:24-26? J. E. K.
Answer: In Matthew 12:43-45, We have the same truth applied to the Jews as a nation, “Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.”
In Luke it is applied generally. The Jews, since Ezra’s time, had been reformed, so that in the days of our Lord on earth, they, as a house, were empty, swept and garnished. So a man may be reformed, give up much outward evil, and may be proud of the change. The Jews did not receive Christ, and remained short of having Him as the One to fill them. So a man must he born again, must receive Christ as his Saviour, and have the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, or his reformation will be of no avail. In the time of tribulation, the Jews will go back to idolatry, and their last state will be worse than their first. So a man that is only reformed, is taken possession of by Satan, as his house. “I will return unto my house, whence I came out,” and his last state is worse than his first. (Compare 2 Peter 2:20-22.) Man must have an object, and if he has not Christ, he will have self in one form or another.
A profession without reality avails nothing. We are to hear the Word of God and to keep it (Luke 11:28). Obedience is one of the characteristics of eternal life.
Question 50: Explain Matthew 16:17, especially “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” H. E. B.
Answer: Peter’s confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” is the occasion for the Lord to reveal what He was going to do. Verse 17 tells us, this revelation of His person to Peter did not come from flesh and blood, but from His Father which is in heaven. “And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter (a stone), and upon this rock (Christ, the Son of the living God), I will build My church (assembly), and the gates of hell (hades), (meaning the unseen world), shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
This is the first time in Scripture we find the church mentioned. Peter was a stone to be built into it (1 Peter 2:5). Christ is the rock on which it is built. He is also the Builder. I will build, shows it was yet future.
At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down to dwell on earth, this church, or assembly was formed, “a spiritual house,” of which every believer is a living stone. Hades is the unseen world or state of the dead. Satan, through sin, has the power of death; but against this church, Satan has no power; the gates of hades, the power of the enemy, shall not prevail against it; for it is built on Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the living One and has the keys of death and of hades (Rev. 1). His is a life that cannot be overcome or destroyed, and what is founded upon this rock of the unchangeable power of life in the Son of the living God shall not be overthrown by the kingdom of death. Satan can go no further than God allows him to go. How blessed and secure are all that belong to Him in all ages! (Num. 23:23; Isa. 54:17).